FLIGHT International, 8 January 1977 8!
Q) Straight and Level Q
• A civil Aztec was investigated at
night over the North Sea by an RAF
Lightning. Shunt, scrape, buckle,
sorreeee . . . Luckily everyone got
home in one piece, and World War
Three wasn't triggered off.
The accident report will not be
published, says Mr Edmund Dell,
with a Ministry of Defence ventrilo
quist standing close behind him, be
cause of "Security".
If Mr Dell had just published a
synopsis saying that the Aztec flight
looked a bit funny, which it did, and
that the Lightning pilot was a little
over-zealous in very difficult condi-
lic, asinine, drivelling Secrecy. We will
get yet another TV programme about
how everything the British do is
bloody awful, when in fact it is mostly
bloody good, the only superbly good
thing of course being our team ot
fearless, crusading, investigative re
porters who have made this TV film,
which is selling for £5,000 a reel to
34 West German, Italian, French and
American TV networks—and down
goes the pound again.
And it will all be the fault of the
filthy journalists again—right, Sir
Secret Harry? Yes indeed, though not
for quotation please, dear boy.
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Good heavens, isn't that a . . .
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tions, the matter would have been closed.
Instead, another weak Minister de
fers to another Permanent Secret
Harry—and thus provokes the fear
less, crusading, investigative journa
lists of The Daily Clanger to make a
mockery of the RAF.
Filthy press swine again, right?
• Ditto ditto, Granada TV rings Flight
for help with a feature on Tornado.
Do we know the address of the
Secrets Case man who lost his job
for criticising the aircraft? Sorry
mate.
But you bet they'll find it, in a
frenzy of simulated Lust for the Truth
—again provoked by fatuous, imbeci-
~Mr Matthews, who joined™
Aer Lingus in 1961 as an
export clerk, was seconded to
East African Airways (Aer
Ltngus have been cargo sales
agents for them in Britain
since 1875) and re-organised
Ithe jrter sybsidi
Above, Freight News Weekly, December 3,
'9'6; right, Sopwith Dolphins in production,
Kingston, December 1918
• Capt Alan Gibson, retired Boeing
747 pilot, was at the recent Flight
hazard-alerting seminar. He quoted
the opinion of an Employment Ap
peal Tribunal judge as follows:
"There are activities in which the
degree of professional skill re
quired is so high, and the potential
consequences of the smallest de
parture from that high standard so
serious, that one failure to perform
in accordance with that standard is
enough to justify dismissal."
The judge cited as examples, ac
cording to Capt Gibson, "passenger-
carrying airline pilots, scientists
operating a nuclear reactor, chemists
in charge of research into the possible
effects of drugs, and drivers of express
trains or lorries carrying sulphuric-
acid."
Should he, Capt Gibson asked, have included judges?
. . . Lancaster? . . . (Above left, smokescreen
being laid at the US Chemical Warfare
School, Maryland, 1937; above, RAF Battle of
Britain Memorial Flight Lancaster and the
Red Arrows, 1975)
YUCKSPEAK LIBRARY
Series of 1,000,000
• "The results presents a picture of
a program pressured by EPA manage
ment-imposed time constraints to
meet legislated mandates for promul
gating new standards, hampered by
inadequate mechanisms to detect and
correct mechanical problems and han
dicapped by budgetary and manage
ment restrictions placed on the pro
gram after it was well under way"—
from a US Congressional Committee
report on an Environmental Protec
tion Agency report.
= This report is useless.